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In college I had a chance to go with my fellow biology students to the Everglades. Before I married, I could have gone, but marrying in college, having to pay rent, buy food, and all those grown-up expenses ate that extra money, so I had to take a pass. I got to sit and listen to the other students talk about all the new birds they saw, and all the adventures they had in Florida. I was having my own adventures as a newlywed, part time employee, and full time student, but it was the stuff of television sitcoms without the laugh track, not in Animal Planet type adventures. I would try several times over the years to see the Everglades and each time something would happen to make it impossible. Yesterday I finally broke my bad planning streak and made it. 

Trinity was with us, and Jon’s parents, and us. And yes, us with no appellation always means Jon and I; yeah, it’s cutesy, what can I say. Due to Jon’s knee not being a hundred percent yet, and my ankle so not being a hundred percent, we couldn’t do the hiking I might have done years ago. Also I don’t think his parents were really eager to do hard climbing, and Trinity is not exactly a hardship loving kind of girl. I’m told by family members that she seems to take after my mother, I can’t speak to that since I was too young to really know, but I know Trin is a much better girl than I ever was, and so was my mother. March is a great time for the Everglades. Misquitos are not out yet, or not to notice. The temperature is seventy something, eighty if it gets that high, breezy, and comfy. They had this great boardwalk out over the water and all those acres of grass and reeds and cattails and mangroves and trees I don’t know the names of. I had my new binoculars we bought in England in one hand and my Peterson’s bird book in the other. (Okay the book was tucked under my arm.) Birds we saw: Green Herons both adults and fledged babies (Got to see an adult stalk and catch a minnow, probably a Mosquito Fish, but not sure. The bird was so patient and so deadly serious about it, but then it’s catch it or starve. I guess that is serious.), Great Blue Herons both adults and fully fledged babies (two different color phases of Great Blue), Ahinghas both male and female, plus babies (babies looked like white Flamingo chicks because of the long, graceful necks and all that white baby fluff), American Bittern, Double-Crested Cormorants, Black Vultures (lot’s of them), Boat-Tailed Grackles both adult and fully fledged babies, Belted King-Fisher male (Got to watch the King-Fisher dive into the water and come out in a rush of water and speed), and one Warbler. I can’t be certain what it was, because I got a few glimpses of mostly yellow body and a black mask then the tiny bird flitted further into the scrub of trees and never reappeared. Warblers are always a challenge. We saw lots of alligators of all sizes from the big boys to the babies, though none of them still had the baby markings on them, so they weren’t really babies. Lot’s of turtles of various kinds, not sure on the species don’t have my reptile book with me. The Gar were hitting the surface of the water in a frenzy. The herons were very interested in them. The gators were hovering below the rookeries waiting for those baby birds to fall.

Okay, I saved the vulture story for it’s own section, because it’s going to be too big for brackets. Let me also add that it’s graphic and not for the squeamish, so if too up close and personal on the nature stuff bothers you stop reading here. Nature red in tooth and claw, and all that. Still with me? Then read on.

There are a lot of vultures around Miami and the Everglades. They glide everywhere like ominous kites. In the walk through the Everglades we saw them gathering in the largest flock yet, and landing. As we got closer, we saw them landing on the ground and them fighting over something. One of us said, "Something’s dead." Then as we got closer, the curtain of black feathered bodies parted and I cried out, "It’s an alligator! They’re eating a dead alligator." We went closer, trying to hurry and not scare them away, but we might as well not have worried, the vultures were not leaving their find just because we were close enough to take pictures. The alligator was about eight feet long, a big, beefy one. It was covered in thick black and gray mud, surrounded by a halo of black vultures. Jon started singing, "The Circle of Life," and I joined him. We got a few looks from other people, but it worked for us, and that’s what counts. The vultures were fighting each other for a place at the corpse, sending them flapping up, jumping and running at each other. Some of the large birds had been chased completely away from the banquet, so they waited, if not patient, quiet. The birds at the alligator were not quiet. They squawked and pecked and tore at the body. They defended their tasty bit of corpse from the nearest birds, which sometimes escalated into fights so one would chase the other bird and they’d both loose their places. There were plenty of vultures waiting to slip into any empty spots. They were so eager at the body, that they made parts of it move, giving it an illusion of life. It was especially cool to watch the vultures hit the head and make the entire neck area move, as if the alligator had suddenly sprung to life and would fight back, but then the head would flop back and the vulture that caused all the movement would hit the eye again. Jon got pictures of the vulture in question pecking at the gator’s eye, then burying it’s beak into the now empty eye socket. So cool. Our very own Animal Planet moment.